Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Trump's and Ryan's ‘PASS TRUMPCARE OR ELSE!’ Nonsense Just Won’t Cut It

Republicans have come up with a new strategy to push Trumpcare: cram it down with threats. Those threats come courtesy of the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the President of the United States. Never mind that Trumpcare doesn’t move the health care system toward a more free-market approach. Never mind that it doesn’t truly lower costs or foster more competition in any serious way, and that it re-enshrines the central principles of Obamacare.

Those who don’t support it will be browbeaten into it.

Here’s Ryan today:

We ran on repeal and replace in 2010, 2012, 2014, and in 2016. Now we are keeping our word to the people who elected us.— Paul Ryan (@PRyan) March 13, 2017

Ryan also threatened a “bloodbath” for Congressional Republicans in 2018 if they failed to pass his proposed bill. This followed hard on last week’s statements that Republicans could either have Ryan’s bill or nothing – that they now had a “binary choice…This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

The binary choice language is nearly always crap. Americans live in a free country. We have lots of choices. But it’s especially stupid logic when we consider that Congress has scores of proposals, including a repeal bill they’ve already passed repeatedly, to get rid of Obamacare. The notion that it’s Ryan’s way or the highway isn’t true legally, politically, or ethically.